Dirty Little Secrets
by Iellix
Summary: We all have secrets, no matter where we come from or what we do. There's no escaping it--ever. Alice and Hatter have to learn how to deal with that.


Well, I'm stuck again in a story so I decided to take a break and write something else. Something that _isn't_ porn. (Hey, at least this time I got eight chapters out before I got stuck.) And I wanted to write this story because a) it sounded cute in my head, and b) I live in the same town as the PostSecret house and it felt like a weirdly fitting tribute. It ended up getting far more serious than I usually end up with. I hope you enjoy the read.

We all have secrets.

Disclaimer: I don't own Alice, or Hatter, or Wonderland, or any of it.

o…o

In the middle of the public park there was a pavilion with an enormous bulletin board. It was divided into sections—'classifieds', 'lost and found', 'community activities', 'community notices'. There was one section at the end that had no specific designation and so became a kind of anonymous posting board for people to suggest improvements. Then it became a place where people could anonymously and safely voice their grievances.

Then it just became known as the 'secret board'. There was no empty space left on that part of the board anymore for the years and years worth of paper slips tacked up with handwritten secrets on them.

Some of them were funny—one from someone who admits that they always pretend not to notice their dog pooping so they don't have to pick it up—and others were frightening—like the one obviously written in a man's hand that admitted he sometimes wonders what it's like to rape a woman. Others still were sentimental, hopeful. Hope_less._ Some admitted to crimes. Some were spiritual. Some were simple bits of paper with the words on them; others were written on pictures or doodles or decorated with something. But all were secrets, all were earnest, and all have been dutifully tacked up on the old bulletin board for everyone to see.

Hatter came upon it one morning while walking through the park and didn't return until late afternoon because he spent the entire day sitting there and sifting through the secrets.

"Interesting, isn't it?" She asked when he told her.

"Yeah. I think I've learned more about this world there than I have from you."

"I hope that isn't meant to be a jab at my teaching abilities."

He grinned and her chest came out in butterflies.

"Naw," he assured her. "It's just… well…"

"A lot of your own secrets are up there even though you've never written a note," she finished for him.

He nodded. "Yeah."

"I guess when you get down to it, we're not all that different after all. No matter what side of the Looking Glass we come from, we all worry about the same things."

Then he asked what felt like a startlingly personal question.

"Are any of them yours?"

"If I told you that, it wouldn't be secret anymore."

"Fair enough."

Once a week Hatter went back to the pavilion to read the new secrets. Sometimes there were a lot of new ones, other times there were just a handful; some days he was the only person reading them, and on other days there were many other people there. Even when there were other people about, none of them talked to each other. They just stood and read in silence because the experience was all rather personal. So many secrets, so many bared souls—talking seemed somehow disrespectful.

Winter melted into spring.

This—this _whatever_ that Alice had with Hatter evolved, slowly. During the week they had their own schedules—Hatter worked part-time in a tea house in the artsy-fartsy part of town and part-time in a second-hand bookstore. He enjoyed doing two different things, he told her; it hardly ever got boring, which was good because he hated boredom. Alice was still teaching at the dojo but that only took up a very small portion of her time. She was slowly taking her life back and finding some direction for it.

While Hatter was acclimating to Alice's world, so too was Alice acclimating to a new life. Even though she never said it directly, he knew that so much of her life before was based on her search for her missing father—it dominated her, and everything else she did took a back seat to it. Everything else in life—relationships, friendships, school, jobs, _everything—_revolved around it.

And now it wasn't there anymore and she was starting over just as new and just as uncertain in her own world as he was.

Fitting, he thought. And strangely so.

At least they neither of them had to go through it alone.

And every week, Hatter would go back to the pavilion in the park to read the secrets.

Sometimes, when he saw one particularly hurtful or distressing—one on a plain pink square of paper read _'I am more afraid of the law than of the man who attacked me'—_he wondered what made people confess such deep, dark, painful secrets with the world. With strangers. Did it help? Was it for their own benefit, or did they hope the object of the secret would find it and somehow know it was theirs?

But then, a secret shared anonymously with strangers couldn't be judged. Nobody could say anything, lambast them, belittle them; the secret was out in the open, but the keeper of the secret wasn't.

Maybe it was relief—the act of telling someone, _anyone,_ a painful secret could maybe make it less painful to keep.

'_In trying not to become my father, I've become something worse than he was.'_

'_I still sleep with the lights on, even though the rape happened more than 20 years ago.'_

'_That my mother thinks I'm going to hell for who I am hurts worse than the idea of actually going to hell.'_

'_I'm locked up so tight inside that even I don't know what my secrets are.'_

Hatter has his own secrets, of course—anyone who lived a life like he did couldn't help but be eyeball-deep in dangerous secrets. He did very well ignoring them in the past, mostly because there were more pressing issues at hand in Wonderland than his own shady past and the bad things he'd done.

But now…

Now they were sitting on the forefront of his mind. He'd done awful, _terrible_ things before and he was acutely, painfully aware of that. He wondered what Alice would do if she knew about them. She might hate him forever, and never want to talk to him again—she hadn't taken well to him when she found out he was a conman in Wonderland, so it stood to reason that she'd probably think he was some kind of a monster if he knew everything else.

Maybe he should put one of his own up there. See if that helped.

He was still thinking of it when he saw one of the new ones on the bulletin board during his weekly trip. It was one of perhaps a dozen new ones, but something about it made it stand out to him.

A bit of light blue card, cut into a heart-shape.

'_I'm scared. Please don't leave.'_

The words were typed and then glued to the card so he couldn't identify the handwriting, but… something about it sounded a little like Alice.

He frowned as he stared at it.

She knew he read the secrets—would she have put this here so he'd see it? What was she scared of? Why didn't she tell him this herself?

Was it even Alice's?

Alice didn't seem any different when he saw her that day, not like someone who'd confessed something to the world. But then, how _would_ such a person appear?

"You okay?" She asked him.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," he said, realizing how perfectly unconvincing he sounded. "Just… thinking."

She studied him carefully for a moment and it made him fidget nervously under her stare.

Then she said, "All right," and went back to her computer.

It still bothered him, though, and he couldn't stop thinking about it. It probably wasn't her secret, he decided, but that didn't mean she didn't think something similar. That night in bed, Alice asleep next to him, all curled up with her back pressed against his side while she slept, he leaned over her and kissed her cheek.

"I'm not going anywhere, you know" he whispered, knowing she couldn't hear it. "Please don't be scared."

The room was dark and he didn't see the slightest little twitch of her mouth.

It took several more weeks of thinking before Hatter wrote his own secret down and another week before he decided he would put it on the board.

He went at night, when the daily park-visitors were gone and he was sure nobody would see him. He crept into the pavilion and placed his secret there amongst the others. Maybe Alice would see it. Maybe she wouldn't. Lots of other people would, though, and that idea didn't scare him at all.

As he left and stepped out into the cool night air, he felt a little bit lighter.

That secret was out of his hands now.

It wasn't his anymore.

And that was comforting.

'_I have done so many awful things in my life and I worry that you might hate me if you knew.'_

A few days later when he came back to look, he saw another note pinned up at the bottom of his own—the same blue card from the secret he wasn't sure was Alice's or not.

'_Whoever they are, if they're worth loving, they won't hold your past against you.'_

o…o

Six months, Alice realized with a sudden shock when she looked at the calendar hanging off the back of her bedroom door. Hatter had been here for six months, and she hadn't even realized. With the exception of Indiana Jones, she'd never been interested in a man longer than this. Ever.

When it came to anniversaries, she always felt like it was timing a prison sentence whenever a boyfriend brought up that they'd been seeing each other for two months or whatever. She even had that reaction when she noticed _herself_ how long they'd been together.

But with Hatter? She had no such reaction.

Six months.

It had been six months and it felt like something was suspiciously missing. It took several days worth of thinking for her to figure out what it was.

Neither of them said they loved the other.

A few boyfriends she'd told she loved; Jack was one of them and she'd only known him for a month at the time. She'd been with Hatter for many times longer than that and she felt so much more for him and she trusted him, and what she had with Hatter was so _different_ than anything she'd experienced before…

But did she love him?

She'd asked herself that question several times before with several different boyfriends, and every time she'd always had to argue and talk with herself and pace nervously for hours until the floor wore out while she went back and forth with the question in her head.

'Love' was a word she didn't just throw around to _anyone_ and she was always most careful about who she told she loved. The question of whether or not she _loved_ someone often caused her to balk, or else overthink it and _then_ balk.

She expected the same thing to happen when she thought about loving Hatter, but this time the answer came immediately and without any apprehension at all.

_Yes._

Yes, she loved him.

But she was scared to death to tell him.

Those old fears of rejection and commitment still snuck up on her. What if he didn't feel the same way? What if she was moving too fast? What if _he_ thought they were moving too fast?

What if, what if, what it?

She knew she shouldn't have worried about it, but she still did. She didn't want to ruin what she had with Hatter.

So she decided to wait until he said it first.

Only he didn't.

A few weeks went by, and those few weeks became a month.

He was acting kind of funny, too, and she couldn't figure out why.

Maybe not _funny,_ she thought. Distant? Different? He seemed preoccupied. Something was on his mind.

Maybe he was homesick.

Or maybe he was having second thoughts.

Her stomach dropped out as she considered that.

Was it true?

She didn't know.

She wanted _so badly_ to tell him that she loved him but every time she thought she could do it, her throat would close up and she would panic and the words wouldn't come out.

So Alice made the decision to go about it in another way.

It wasn't her first secret she'd hung on the bulletin board in the pavilion. She'd done it before, a few times. She wasn't perfect, after all. She had her fair share of secrets, things she was ashamed to admit to herself but that she admitted to the rest of the city anonymously. But each time previously she'd done it knowing that the subject of her secret—her father, her mother, boyfriends, friends—would probably never read it or if they _did_ read it then they wouldn't know it was from her.

This time she wanted Hatter to find her secret.

She drew a picture of a hat, a little like the brown pork-pie hat he wore in Wonderland when they first met; she wrote her secret on the white paper along the brim.

'_I love you, but I don't know how to tell you.'_

She knew he read the secrets and she hoped—_hoped!—_he'd read it and see the hat and recognize it and know it was from her.

It was _really_ early in the morning and still half-light when she went to the park to leave her secret in the pavilion; she told Hatter she had to teach the early class that morning so he wouldn't be suspicious of her leaving. In reality, she had no such class to teach because everyone at the dojo knew she was a bear in the morning and was likely to take those little brats and throw them into the lockers.

Nobody was there in the pavilion or around it, and she quickly took a tack out of her bag and went to pin it up.

—and there, staring her in the face, was her own secret.

It was written on an index card with a little picture drawn on it. A picture of a brown pork-pie hat.

No, it couldn't be… could it?

'_I love you,'_ was written above the sketch. Below it:_ '(There, I said it. One of us had to say it first.)'_

She stared at it for ages.

It had to be Hatter's. There was no way it couldn't be.

She took it off the bulletin board.

"Excuse me, miss," someone tapped her shoulder and she turned around. "You're not supposed to _take_ secrets."

Alice shook her head. "I know who wrote this," she said. "I have to go talk to him."

She went straight back to Hatter's apartment and into the bedroom where he was just getting dressed. Jeans, undershirt, barefoot, and a hat. Always a hat.

He looked up and frowned.

"Alice? I thought you had class."

She held out the secret she'd taken off the board.

"This is yours," she said flatly. It wasn't a question but a statement, leaving no room for any argument on his end.

Hatter nodded. "How'd you know?"

She reached into her back pocket and held out her own eerily similar secret.

"I found it when I went to leave the one I wrote."

His eyes went back and forth between the two of them, frowning slightly.

"Is it true?" She asked.

"Of course it's true," he said quickly. "I wouldn't've said it if it wasn't."

He was still frowning.

"Did you see me writing mine?" He asked.

"No," she said. "Did you?"

He shook his head.

"But they're the same. Mostly."

She sat on the bed. "Yeah, I saw."

There was a pause that stretched into a silence and both of them felt increasingly awkward. They'd written those three words on bits of paper to show to the army of people who read the secrets in the pavilion, but they couldn't say them to each other.

Alice nervously chewed her lip, so hard it nearly bled.

"Okay, I'll say it first," he said. He stood before her and grasped her shoulders gently. "Alice, I love you."

She felt her lower lip start to quiver and she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly and buried her face in his chest.

And then, to her own surprise and clearly to _his,_ instead of crying like she thought she would, she laughed.

"I love you, too, Hatter," she murmured.

She pulled him down and kissed him soundly. She meant it to be gentle and sweet but it grew rapidly in intensity until he was leaning her back on the bed and they were both gasping for breath.

"D'you have any classes today?" He asked, his voice raspy and his cheeks pink.

She grinned and shook her head. "Not until tonight."

He smiled, a crooked, wicked, predatory smile with one dimple at the corner that made a delicious little shiver run up her back.

"Fancy locking the doors and taking the phone off the hook?" He breathed in her ear.

She giggled and kissed him swiftly.

"Okay."

o…o

The rocky, gravelly beach wasn't a really popular spot for beachgoers even during the peak of beach season; in the middle of winter it was completely abandoned and empty and they had it to themselves. The breeze off the dark water was cold and turned their cheeks pink. The streetlights from the road behind them provided the only light.

Hatter finished arranging the pile of tinder and stood up, dusting the sand and dirt and bits off of his hands; then he picked up the collar of his coat and ducked into it in an effort to keep warm.

"All ready?" Alice asked.

He nodded quickly, and she knelt by the pile and carefully lit it. The fire grew quickly and they sat down close to it for warmth but a few feet away from each other.

They each reached into their pockets and pulled out a few scraps of paper.

"You wanna go first?" She asked. "Or should I?"

"I'll start," he said.

He shuffled the papers in his hand.

"I really was addicted to tea."

Alice didn't say anything in response to it; instead she looked down at the papers in her own hands.

"I used my dad's absence as an excuse to behave badly for most of my life," she said.

"I'm responsible for at least ten people being dead—probably more."

"I pretended I hurt my knee in karate class, so I could have the painkillers and not have to think about everything that was wrong in my life."

"I didn't join the Resistance willingly."

"I was only fourteen when I lost my virginity, not seventeen like I told you."

"I was 21, not sixteen like _I_ told _you."_

"Sometimes I think I'm more scared of being loved than I am of being left."

"My mother was an Oyster."

"I think I still hate my dad, even though leaving wasn't his idea."

Silence.

They didn't look at each other and they didn't say anything and they stayed sitting apart.

The things they were most ashamed of—the things that bothered them the most, or upset them, or worried them—were bared and out in the open between them.

And then they took their secrets and put them on the fire and watched them burn. The papers charred, the words disappeared, and then there was nothing. Just ash.

"They're gone," she said. Then she looked up at him. "They don't control us anymore."

Hatter inched closer to her in the sand, and she leaned on his shoulder, still staring into the fire.

"There's one more," he said after a while.

"Oh?" She sat up and frowned. "We said five—"

"I know," he said, cutting her off. "But it's not that kind of secret."

"Then what…?"

He turned so he faced her; his eyes were soft and his face was half-lit by the flickering firelight.

"Alice, I fell in love with you the first time I met you."

Her eyes went wide.

"I saw you, and I stopped breathing. I started again, obviously, but…"

She stopped his struggle for the right words by cupping his face in her hands and kissing him.

"I know what you mean," she said.

He sat her in front of him and bracketed her with his legs and wrapped his long coat around both of them. They stayed there together in the sand, in silence, in front of their fire until it burned down to embers.

A year.

They'd been together, they'd been 'Alice-and-Hatter', whatever that was, for a year.

Twelve months.

365 days.

A hundred arguments.

48 pizzas.

32 shouting matches.

Eighteen really, really bad fights.

Eighteen really, really good make-ups.

Six trips to Wonderland.

One apartment-shift.

And no more secrets.

o…o

I won't go into anything more here, except to say that at least one of the 'secrets' in this story is mine. We all have them. What's yours?


End file.
